1. Technical Field
The embodiments described herein relate to a display device, and more particularly, to a multimode source driver and a display device employing the multimode source driver.
2. Related Art
Liquid crystal display (LCD) devices have been widely used in portable electronic apparatuses such as cellular phones and other portable devices. An LCD driver is commonly composed of source drivers, gate drivers, and a timing controller. Low power consumption and high display quality have been an unceasing pursuit of all LCD devices.
Typically, liquid crystal display panels are driven according to an inversion driving method (e.g., a frame inversion method, a line (or column) inversion method, or a dot inversion method) to improve display quality as well as to prevent liquid crystal material from deteriorating. Advantageously, driving the LCD panel according to the dot inversion method may improve the picture quality of the LCD panels compared to the other inversion methods, because flicker occurring in both horizontal and vertical directions can offset each other. However, power dissipation of the LCD panel driven by the dot inversion method is excessively high due to large fluctuation amount of a display data signal applied by the source driver.
Recently, a Z-inversion display panel is proposed, which may have display quality similar to that provided by the dot inversion method, while the power consumption of the source driver can be remarkably reduced compared to that of LCD panels driven according to the dot inversion method.
On the other hand, the source driver also plays a particularly critical role for achieving demand for low-power dissipation and high-speed LCD devices. Various source drivers have been developed to meet many design constraints such as driving capability and driving speed for large loads of the display panel and low power consumption. However, in many situations where the load on the display panel is excessively high, dual source-drivers are required to be disposed on two sides of a display panel to have mitigated loading from the display panel.
It is thus highly desired to design a source driver that not only meets those design constrains but also has high adaptability to various display types, particularly Z-inversion display panels, for achieving power consumption, and to dual source driver configurations, for achieving load mitigation.